Giving Amazon the key to your house: unintended consequences

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/12/07/amazon-wants-a-key-to-your-house-i-did-it-i-regretted-it

Don't buy anyone an Echo

Why in-home listening devices are scary-bad.  (Recommended by a pro-technology web site, even.)

https://gizmodo.com/dont-buy-anyone-an-echo-1820981732

You Will Lose Your Job to a Robot—and Sooner Than You Think

A provocative article about the displacement of workers by intelligent machines appeared in Mother Jones
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/you-will-lose-your-job-to-a-robot-and-sooner-than-you-think/

Here's the cover  photo:

How much space would 8GB of 3.5" floppies require?

I bought a $7 flash drive recently that holds 8GB.  It's tiny.  Curious, I did some calculations.  If my arithmetic is correct, that 8GB is equivalent to almost 6000 3.5 inch floppy drives, which would fill a cube 5ft on a side.  So by dollar per GB it's about 1000 times cheaper.   3.5 inch disk sales peaked in 2002 at 14 million.  So only ten years later, and we have 8GB flash drives. 

These gentlemen are holding a string to approximate a 5 ft cube.

Hyping classroom technology helps tech firms, not students

Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120205,0,639053.column

National Day of Unplugging 2011

Here's a great idea:
National Day of Unplugging 2011

The Revolution will not be tweeted

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink! has a fine essay on why
The Revolution will not be tweeted.